


We Can Go Where We Want To

by RandomItemDrop (thedurvin)



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work, Random Item Drop
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:00:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25967032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedurvin/pseuds/RandomItemDrop
Summary: An experiment with a Phase Spider strands a young wizard from an idyllic fantasy kingdom in the Realms of Ridare, a world of floating cities, neon lights, and Stop-n-Quaff vending machines. Can he keep from getting distracted by indoor plumbing and Orcs with graduate degrees long enough to find his way home?
Kudos: 12





	1. Like We Come From Out Of This World

Ephraim recovered suddenly, not having realized he had blacked out. He seemed to be sideways on the ground in a pile of rubbish, his shoulder aching from striking the concrete, his eyes gradually focusing on a brick wall; there was a thick layer of grime everywhere, and several incomprehensible words had been written in luminous paint on the wall. He seemed to have landed face-first in a pile of table scraps and had come dangerously close to a chicken bone sneaking its way around his spectacles to jab him in the eye. The air was warm and humid, but not in a pleasant summery way, more like the fumes rising from a midden-heap. With his plain student’s staff he stood up and checked his shoulder, and was relieved to find his massive spider companion was still there.  
Through a hole in the wall, he could still see his own world, verdant and woodsy and blue-skied; the spider twiddled its blue and white pedipalps and the portal winked away, leaving only the plain wall and a sort of paper tapestry glued to the bricks. Its design depicted a fuming cauldron with some sort of motley-clad jester quaffing a glass flask while throwing an orange orb through a hoop, all surrounded by bold but incomprehensible runes of golden flame. **Comprehend Languages** , Ephraim cast with a wave of his staff, and the runes resolved into his mind: ‘Green Cauldron Energy Potion Dunks Your Thirst To The Max!’  
“What a curious realm,” he smiled. He seemed to be down an alleyway between a couple of buildings in a world completely unlike his own. His little experiment had worked flawlessly, save that he was not used to interplanar travel and had fainted from disorientation, knocking over some garbage cans and a stack of wooden pallets. There was little to see right, left, forward, back, but above him he could see that the buildings around him continued up far longer than he expected like huge castles; they seemed to go off in every direction, interlaced with curious black or silver ropes or tubes, nothing Ephraim had ever seen in the all the realms of Argelos. Before entering the tutelage of the College of Magick, he had once visited the city with his father the tanner, but if the word ‘city’ denoted that loose collection of wooden beams and daubed walls surrounding a castle whose tallest tower barely crested the local trees, then what could possibly describe this place? What kind of kings lived in castles this close together? At the end of the alley he could peek out into a thoroughfare lit with orbs of light on iron trees and glowing runes on the fronts of every building, lighting the way for horseless carriages that rolled and roared in the flat streets, which thronged with peoples of a dozen races and classes; across the street and looming overhead was a place like an immense glass greenhouse fogged from within and dotted with curious corroded chimneys. Above them the sky was not the blue of day or the black of night, but a writhing purple-orange as the streetlights were diffused by the fumes of the glass building into a warm glow like dusk in a fog. “Excellent work, my small friend,” he said to the spider. “Let us collect evidence of our journey, and then I think—“  
“Who’s out there?” called a voice from behind a metal door set into the brickwork of one of the surrounding buildings.  
“Ah! A native!” Ephraim said. Quickly he dusted the refuse from his vestments, adjusted his spectacles, and freshened the spell that kept his hair in place and colored the wine-like shade he preferred. Over his simple student’s robe, he wore a rose-colored tunic embroidered with curious black designs resembling spiders and their webs, complimented by the actual spider riding on his shoulder, immense, gripping with long white and blue talons. Ephraim could feel the spider willing its way from his presence, but the young wizard concentrated, focused his power through the enchanted tunic, and calmed its simple mind, then turned back to the task at hand. “Indeed, sir! Or madam! I bring greetings! I am a traveller and explorer from the realm of Argelos! I have travelled from beyond the dimensional barriers using magicks of my own devising, and—erm, I bring greetings!” He had been so excited to try out his magical experiment it had not occurred to him that he might land somewhere not used to interplanar travellers poking holes in their walls and wandering around looking for souvenirs, and only now did he realize he should perhaps have prepared a speech. As he had spoken, the metal door had been in the process of unlatching, and finally it opened. A pair of large eyes peered out at him from the darkness. “Splendid tidings, my friend, I am—“  
“Oh, shit! Phase spider!” the voice said. A tiny bolt of force shot from the darkness and knocked the spider from Ephraim’s shoulder; temporarily freed from the power of the Tunic of Spider Command, it skittered amongst the garbage, then with a pop was gone.  
“Ah,” Ephraim said. “Ah, good sir, that was—“  
“Nearly got you, I seen it,” the voice said. The door eased open further to reveal the bolt had come from a Blasting-Wand, held in the furred talons of some sort of wide-mouthed being with bulging eyes, a race Ephraim could not remember having met before. “Hell you doing behind my shop?”  
“I just…I came from…” Ephraim stuttered. “I am a student at the wizard’s college of Argelos…I reasoned out a way to harness a phase spider’s plane-shifting abilities to travel between realms. Are you a native of this world?”  
“Some luck you got, kid—no, I ain’t,” the squat figure told him. “Guess I never did do a proper patch on the hole in reality I came through from Qeld. Phase Spiders and Boggles and all kinds of other plane-shifting assholes are constantly sneaking through the weak points, and I guess now junior wizards casting above their level.” Qeld! Ephraim vaguely remembered having seen the name while sneaking a peek into forbidden grimoires of extraplanar travel. It was one of the Outer Realms, home to a boisterous conquering race, the P’lytqats. Was that where he was? Couldn’t be—as impressive as these buildings were, they only seemed to stretch out in three dimensions.  
“But the spider’s gone,” Ephraim said. “I only got here by dominating the Phase Spider, and now it’s gone. How am I going to get back?”  
“Oh, boy,” the P’lytqat sighed. “Another one of these. Whyncha come in the shop and we’ll see what we can do.”

The P’lytqat’s shop was filled with bottled potions and curious victuals wrapped in tiny transparent sacks that crinkled under the touch. One wall featured a row of luminous chambers under some sort of frost-spell, and through their glass doors Ephraim recognized bottles of the energy potion he had seen on the tapestry outside, and he realized suddenly how exhausted and thirsty he was.  
“May I sample your wares, merchant?” Ephraim asked.  
“Sample? No. But you can buy one,” the P’lytqat said. “Name’s Syd. Yours?”  
“Ephraim Tanner’s-Son of Ninderos, a village of Argelos,” he replied. Through the shop’s windows he could see into the street, where beings of every race were wandering. The curious glass building across the street was surrounded by a black brick wall, its one door under armed guard. “Is that really your name? Syd?”  
“No, of course not,” it laughed. “I’m from the Outer Planes, kid. To say my real name correctly, your tongue’s gotta move in six dimensions of radial fractalized time, and I got enough problems without customers suing me for retroactively spraining their linear-time mouth-muscles.” It climbed up onto a stool behind its counter and lit itself a cigarette. “What’s with the pink polo shirt?”  
“It’s a Tunic of Spider Command!”  
“Oho, a tunic, eh? La-di-da,” Syd chuckled.  
“Well, I don’t know what they call them in whatever realm this is, but where I’m from it’s a tunic, and its fabric is interwoven with powerful magicks that grant the wearer domination over any spider in their immediate radius,” Ephraim explained. “I suppose you know all about that, though, as an alchemist. Are you an alchemist? In Argelos usually potions are made by alchemists. Or hags. You’re not a hag, are you?”  
“No, you dope, I just run the shop,” Syd said, blowing a tesseract smoke-ring. “I was a soldier back in Qeld—I mean, pretty much everybody is if you don’t want your sector venomkaiser injecting a drachm of phlogiston in your stomatophores, haha—but once you’ve seen a realm where it rains water, you don’t really wanna go back to boiling quicksilver, you know? So I deserted and made my way here. The hours are great—one right after the other, I freakin’ love causality. Plus the snacks are way better.” From one of the shelves the P’lytqat grabbed a packet and opened it, drawing out what appeared to be a brick of styrofoam covered in savory orange powder. It took a bite and crunched loudly, the powder adhering to its fingers and lips. “Now I’m an authorized seller of Green Cauldron Energy Potions, as well as the rest of the Scrumptius Industries family of products. They dig up the energy-crystals from the Mines of Mount Andu, mix up the potions in vats, bottle ‘em, and deliver ‘em, and as long as they don’t shut me down and replace me with a Stop-n-Quaff vending machine, all I gotta do to earn my living is mash this button whenever somebody wants to trade some money for an energy potion.”  
“Ah,” Ephraim said. “Coins for goods. Nice and simple; I was afraid this realm was on a barter system.”  
“Afraid you’d have to pay in chickens? Ha. Nah,” it said. “One Falcoin.” Ephraim fumbled in his pouch-of-carrying and produced a handful of coins of his own realm, mostly copper and silver. **Convert Currency** , he cast, making sure to flourish with his staff since he had an audience (a big part of being a wizard was looking like one to anyone watching) and the coins transformed into an equivalent value of local money, the seal of the Council of Argelos morphing into the outline of a falcon set into a shiny coin of blue-green sheen. The merchant took it and motioned to the bottle. “Nice trick for a student. All yours, kid.”  
“Many thanks, shopkeeper,” Ephraim said, fingering the bottle’s stopper. “I’m not the most talented caster in Argelos, but I get by, just a little morphic transmutation. Ah…is there a spell to open this? I have not seen a cork such as this…”  
“It’s a twist-off, dummy,” the merchant said, demonstrating. The pondscum-green liquid hissed with effervescence as the lid was removed. “Wizard you may be, but I can tell you’re not from around here any more than I am, and awfully young to be hopping around the multiverse solo. You been messing with magicks beyond your ken?”  
“No, I certainly haven’t,” Ephraim protested.  
“You sure?”  
“Beyond my _ability to control_ , but completely within my ken.”  
“So in your ken, just not your control. Sounds pretty beyond your ken to me, kid.”  
“All I did was borrow a Tunic of Spider Control from Master Ghorel’s secret collection of magical items he keeps behind the bookcase in his study, lend an Ever-Filling Bowl I stole from the college victualer to the Hermit of Snowcrow Peak for a day’s use of his Key Orb, sneak into the College Bestiarium while Master Jorich was at his monthly tea with Chancellor Tarkham, steal a Phase Spider from the Hall of Chitinous Beasts, and use the Tunic to compel it to teleport me to another realm. I just wanted to show them how simple my new technique for plane-shifting is, so I wanted it to bring me somewhere distinct from Argelos, and this is the realm it shifted me to.”  
“It’s beyond your ken,” the P’lytqat chuckled. “So you gonna plane-shift back to Argelos, or you gonna look around first?”  
“Ah. I am but a humble student of the magical arts,” Ephraim explained. “Curious and well-regarded by his instructors, yes, but still quite low-level. I would need to find a spell-caster far more powerful than I to return to Argelos. That’s why I was so excited to come up with an easy way to plane-shift.”  
“So you’re stuck,” it said.  
“You chased away my Phase Spider, so yes, I’m stuck,” he said.  
“I thought it was gonna bite you, that’s usually what they do. Didn’t I say I was sorry?”  
“No, you didn’t.”  
“Shit. Well, I’m sorry I shot a deadly monster off your shoulder with flawless accuracy when apparently you wanted it there, since I ain’t never heard of no Tunic of Spider Whatever. But hey, kid, maybe you’ll be better off laying low for a while. Ain’t your profs gonna be sore at you for stealing their fancy shirt?”  
“Tunic,” Ephraim insisted, “but I see your point. I suppose they might. Ah, but I can give it back, no harm done, and with a successful test of a magical experiment to duplicate the effect of a wizard far above my level! They should be proud.” He tapped his staff on the linoleum floor a few times absently. “Although I can’t return the Phase Spider. They’re not easy to catch. And I dispelled the Field of Unmoving to take it out of the display; the material cost of that is…ah, not forgettable. It may be well not to rush off back to Argelos just yet. What is this realm?”  
“Ridare.”  
“Never heard of it.”  
“It’s not in most of the tomes,” the P’lytqat said. “Argelos, now. I think the Numinous Warlords of Qeld sent some spies to Argelos one time to see about killing everybody as tribute to Kzraaatch the Bile Messiah; nice place. Lot of sun-dappled forests and ancient castles with pennants flying, right?”  
“Well, not all so idyllic as that,” Ephraim said modestly. “Argelos is mainly a loose coalition of rival kingdoms of Man, united with the Elven keeps and Dwarven fastnesses against the incursions of Goblin hoards, necromantic warlocks, the usual things. And spies from the Outer Planes. Is this realm anything like that? Who lives here?”  
“Oh, they got all of those, yeah, and others too,” Syd chuckled. “The races have mostly made peace with each other, settled into a nice seething mutual loathing about a hundred years back after some asshole wizard channeled all the energy out of their sun and started casting spells that fucked with basic physics. Whole planet fell apart.”  
“He _blew up the planet?!_ ” Ephraim spat, choking energy potion into his sinuses, where it fizzed and somehow tasted even more green than it did on his tongue. “How did anyone survive?!”  
“Oh, it didn’t explode, just sort of crumbled. Far as anybody can tell, he switched gravity off from affecting rocks,” Syd said. “Big mess. Lava everywhere, nobody could tell if it was still called magma or what. I’m still not sure where the oceans went. Luckily they had enough wizards and clerics and whatnot to cast protection spells and hold enough of it together that they could rebuild.”  
“Rebuild from _what?_ The _world collapsed!_ ”  
“Yeah, but that just means there’s lots of chunks of raw material outside all the little bubbles of protection and nobody claiming them,” Syd explained. “Plus there’s chunks of all the other planets that also got exploded when the Sun went, so they had lots of cool exotic shit to work with. Really kick-started innovation, y’know? Everybody working together to patch the world back up. So that’s how come they got these self-moving chariots and telephones and soda-pop factories and I don’t even know what-all.”  
“Faugh. Evil wizards,” Ephraim fumed, shaking his head.  
“I know, right? I heard that,” Syd sighed, tapping away his cigarette ash. “Anyway, welcome to the Falcopolis, one of the biggest chunks of Ridare, and growing daily with new territorial acquisitions and corporate buy-outs. Where we are, right now, around the center-point of the city, is the shitty old neighborhood called the Bronchs, where the city’s got its air treatment plants to make sure everybody can breathe.”  
“And all these castles on the streets?”  
“Ha, listen to him, castles,” Syd laughed. “I bet back in Argelos, not a lot of the castles have been bought by real estate conglomerates and subdivided into lofts and spacious retail parcels. Uptown they got a few real castles leftover from Ye Olden Tymes, but here in the Bronchs, these are what they call Neo-Olden. FalCorp built ‘em to class up the joint and house the folks working at the treatment plants.”  
“More of this futuristic technology?”  
“Nah, god-lungs,” Syd smirked. “The Falconers had barely finished their castle after the Sundering when they got raided by the cult of some heathen wind-god, but since the god was short on believers, they got massacred by the Falcon-Knights. Dead gods’ pieces have all kinds of cool powers, so the first Lord-Falconer had the big idea of industrializing them. The Bronchs is built around that big industrial complex across the street there where the wind-god’s parts keep the air flowing and clean, which is important since the city is basically just a bunch of flying rocks taped together with spit and chewing-gum.”  
“What a terrifying realm,” Ephraim said.  
“Bah, you’ll be fine,” Syd said, getting down off the stool. “Just watch your step so you don’t fall off any of the edges; the Bronchs is in the middle of a huge fuckin’ city as wide as it is tall, but if you missed a couple of floors going down I don’t even know where you’d end up.”  
“Do they not have safety netting up in the gaps—“  
“Buddy! Hiya!” Syd said as a customer came in the door. He looked to Ephraim like an unusually hirsute Halfling, possibly crossed with a pudgy badger or a small bear.  
“Hiya, Syd; who’s the kid?” Buddy asked.  
“Some off-worlder accidentally fell through my old portal,” Syd said. “Poor kid thought he could talk a Phase Spider into giving him a tour of the multiverse, but then first portal he falls through he lands in my garbage cans and loses his spider, so now he’s stuck.”  
“You shot it off my shoulder—“  
“Gee whiz, pal, that’s rough,” said Buddy. “Well, you landed in the Falcopolis and it’s a hell of a town and a real land of opportunity. Best of luck to ya. Now, say, Syd, you catch that ballgame last night? Gee whiz!”  
“Sure did, Buddy-boy. Say, gimme a sec, will ya? Then I got some things to tell ya about that ballgame, haha,” Syd said. “Sorry, kid, me and the nice Bumpkin got a lot to talk about. But speaking of places for you to land, I know just the joint. The Lord Falconer and his cronies uptown might not care much what happens to the folks down here, but in the Bronchs, we take care of each other. Head out the door, turn left at the end of the Bronchusworks after the McFungusFlayer, keep going until you hit a statue of the Fourth Falconer fighting a snake or something, and you should see a martial arts studio. Old Master Kotei Kan’nen and his granddaughter run the place, and they’ve always kept a few spare rooms up above for hard-luck cases like you. Best of luck, huh? So, Buddy, was that a ballgame or was that a ballgame? Ha!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, you probably know already, but this fic expands on my world-building Tumblrs, Random Item Drop and Random Encounters. Items and encounters appearing in this chapter:  
> • Pink Polo of Spider Command: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/172407579455/  
> • Phase Spider: D&D canon  
> • Blasting Wand: D&D canon, I’m pretty sure  
> • Giant Cheeto: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/187772179116/  
> • Green Cauldron Energy Potion: I’m sure it’s in there someplace. Tumblr is a webbed site  
> • Syd: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/176253207557/  
> • Ever-Filling Bowl: apparently I made this up while writing?  
> • Key Orb: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/172185170911/


	2. Leave the Real One Far Behind

Once Syd and Buddy had gotten onto the subject of ‘that ballgame’, Ephraim was utterly incapable of interjecting a word—apparently in these realms, ballgames were not played by children, but rather by adults that were paid heaps of gold by people gathering by the score to watch, and tensions ran strongly as to which warrior’s talents were greatest. So, Ephraim went over the directions in his mind and set out, staff in hand. After his time in the alley behind Syd’s shop, he had thought he had a handle on the sensory overload of the Falcopolis, but he had been wrong.  
Set into the wall around the glass building across the street was a pair of bronze doors overhung with a massive glowing sign that proclaimed the facility to be properly known as the Falcon Corporation Certified Air Ventilation & Purification Bronchusworks. At least one building looked an awful lot like a stone giant that had been hollowed out and turned into a hostelry, and a raised streetway was held aloft by arms he knew had come from Iron Golems. Walking along under the orbs of light and glowing signs, Ephraim recognized some of the races he saw, but not all, mixing freely and mostly dressed in outlandish garb in colors that brought water to his eyes. Elves still held themselves high and aloof, while more of those furry Halflings were their usual blithely amicable selves; there were also animal-hybrids of many kinds, some cliques of leering Goblins, and here and there strode a hulking green Orc. There was even a Human or two, so Ephraim wouldn’t stand out too much. Many an evil-eye was cast between them, but it was still a step up from the bloody wars of Argelos’ history, and they all seemed to either ignore Ephraim or do no more than sneer if they thought he was looking at them too close. This detachment was a new thing for him—he had never been ignored in his life. Back in Argelos, in Nindelos-Village or at the College, if he walked down any road he could find, any figure he met was sure to know his name and demand to know some asinine piece of business—had his father the tanner stored urine enough for the coming season, was his grandmother’s grippe cured, what he thought of Chancellor Tarkham’s lectures on tasseography, and so on, endlessly, interrupting any idea he may have been ruminating on. Ephraim was a scholar, a creator, a great one for wondering, and this city of infinite ideas and people but not one knowing him or wanting to ask if he had yet happened to learn **Cure Ringworm** —this was truly a paradise, if a noisy and flickering one. On the streets more of those great trundling machines rolled by, but stranger still was when he reached a gap and saw out over the edge of a ledge, peering between the stones that held up the streets and buildings to see another layer of urbanity underneath. Soaring through the gap a gigantic pink turtle swam lazily through the air, its human rider giving Ephraim a rude gesture as he stared.  
“Wonders abound,” Ephraim muttered to himself. He knew his family and many of his teachers back at the College of Magicks would say this realm with its throbbing glare and constant noise and rows of coughing chimneys was a vile world of filth and sin—what kind of world didn’t even have a Sun? Not normal, that was. But look, they had harnessed raw energy and constructed suns of their own in every color of the rainbow—given the exigency and darkness, what wizard would not do the same? Ephraim had never been one to prize solid ground beneath his feet. These people must be fierce and ingenious: they needed to breathe, so they tore a cruel god apart and harnessed its powers to benefit them all. As long as he could avoid getting run over by one of these great wheeled devices, he suspected he could do well here.  
He was now at the juncture of his directions, and had to confront the fact that he had no idea what a muck-fungus-flayer was; he asked a few pedestrians and got a few flippant remarks and a mild curse before someone pointed behind him to a purple glowing sign that proclaimed a tremendous plaster mushroom to be the thing he was looking for, a public-house so famed that apparently Master or Mistress McFungusFlayer had served over a thousand-thousand customers. Unfortunately, he’d been so impressed and overwhelmed by the Falcopolis’ constant miasma of spectacle that he couldn’t tell which way he had come from, and thus which way he was intended to turn. He was tempted to forget Syd’s directions and try Feather-Falling over the ledge to visit the next layer down the city and land where he would, but relented after seeing signs mounted on the ledge specifically saying not to do so, flanked by a pair of steely constables in teal falcon-crest uniforms were watching him closely. Glancing around at his options, he could see in the distance down one boulevard a statue that certainly seemed to be _someone_ fighting a wyrm (which someone might mistake for a snake), and opted to try his luck that way.  
Ephraim had no idea what a ‘martial arts studio’ might entail, but assumed his scholarly prowess would see him through. ‘Martial arts’ he guessed was a euphemism for combat, while a studio was a place where an artist created their work, so it sounded like a whimsical play-on-words for a gladiator’s arena. He knew there were spells to find the way to a destination, but the only ones he could think of needed somewhere specific to go. He decided he may as well try something that had served him well a time or two before: wave his staff around magically and mutter whatever it was he wanted to happen and see if he could cast something useful.  
“ **Find Arena**?” he hazarded. No, that was silly. Spells tended not to be anything so specific or mundane as distinguishing between types of building, at least by the nomenclature of civic reckoning. “Ah. What happens in an arena? Fighting. **Find Battle**.” Sure enough, he felt his staff lean hard down the street. With a laugh of triumph he followed after it.  
The storefront the spell lead him to may or may not have been the right one from the look of it; the sign over the door said ‘Lucky Fist Dojo’, and a gathering of Ridareans was blocking the entrance and any windows Ephraim might have been able to see through. His staff gently guided his hand towards this cluster, apparently attracted to an argument between them more than anything happening inside: a tanned blonde Elf in a wide-shouldered silk jacket was engaged in a furious battle of words and gestures with a green-feathered bird-matron in coarse blue trousers, hackles raised as the bounds of language were tested to see if she might be better served with a few well-placed ankle-spurs upside a pair of pointy ears. Everyone else seemed to be watching for fun.  
“This is supposed to be play-fighting to teach kids discipline—you think your little girl beating up my Russell is discipline?!” the bird-matron cried. “I know if she’d scuffed mommy’s purse she’d be disciplined, but waiting until class is over and beating up poor kids? No problem there, huh? She’s a perfect little princess that can do no wrong!”  
“Of course she is, Alicibeth is a Sun-Elf!” the Elf said. “Our clan are members of the Elven Elder Council of the Aurora-Havens, so she has been a Jeweled Marquess of the Twinkling Horizon since she was born, and she’s got top marks from her life-coach in actualization _and_ purposefulness!”  
“Oh, I’m sure she does!” said the bird-matron. “Well, Russell’s school got shut down because they couldn’t afford to clear out an infestation of ceiling-tile lurkers, because the city had to divert the education budget to fund another subdivision for _you_ people—”  
“Ugh! Mother! Let’s just go!” cried Alicibeth, all of nine years old. She was wearing a white tunic and trousers cinched with an orange belt, and had no shoes. Like her mother, her skin was perfectly tanned and her hair was a flawless coiffeur of wavy blonde. “I didn’t mean to hurt the dumb little bird-boy, he just wouldn’t shut up about farts—“  
“Now, honey, the grownups are talking,” her mother told her. “We are Sun-Elves from a very prestigious, old, and proud clan that is not about to get talked to like this by some birdbrain—“  
“What did you just call me?! You can’t say that word!” said the bird-matron. Two of those iron-grey constables Ephraim had seen earlier had been attracted by the commotion and were wading through the crowd. “Don’t you dare—oh. Officers! You gonna deal with this? Her daughter beat up my son. Class was over and she just hopped on him like a chicken on a junebug.” Up close, Ephraim saw that the constables were not just steely-eyed, but grey-skinned all over, stern of visage and clad in a black and teal uniform with a winged silver F design featured prominently. Perhaps Ephraim was simply new to Ridare and its denizens, but they seemed to be of no race or species he could identify—nor gender, for that matter. The two were identical, black of eye, sharp of chin, and their noses huge and bony aquilines—normally compared to eagle or hawk beaks, but given the situation and the logos on their jackets and caps, put Ephraim in mind of falcons.  
“Your tones are unsuitable, citizens,” said one bloodlessly. “De-escalate and disengage immediately.”  
“ _My_ tones are unsuitable?!” the Elf shrieked. “Her filthy son accuses my innocent daughter of attacking him and _my_ tone is unsuitable?!”  
“Reference the Raucus Gathering Act, Reign of the Sixth Falconer, Twelfth Year,” said the second constable in the exact same voice as its partner. “Any gathering of ten or more sapient creatures in which members’ voices equal or exceed the level of—“  
“Oh, do _not_ try and say the problem is us raising our voices,” snapped the bird-matron, uniting with the Elf against a common enemy. Spectators murmured in agreement. The Elf and the bird were both turning their full fury on the constables, who stood impassively and absorbed it. Ephraim, meanwhile, felt a tug at his sleeve and found a small green bird-boy with ruffled feathers.  
“You a withard?” he asked.  
“A wizard? Ah—almost, yes,” Ephraim answered. “Did you want to see a magic trick—“  
“My name Wuthell. I can fart weal loud.” The boy giggled.  
“What does that have to do with me being a—“  
“Your pink shirt is dumb,” the boy said, wandering off. Ephraim realized there was an entryway to the building on the other side of the crowd and pushed his way in; nobody seemed to mind as long as he didn’t block their view. He opened the door and stepped inside, beholding the most disturbing sight to ever affront his young eyes: a broad, low-ceilinged room with thick mats in the center, a ring of adults on the edges watching—and clapping in encouragement!—as more children, even younger than Alicibeth and Russell but in the same tunics, now belted with yellow, kicked and punched at each other, some of them falling over in the process.  
“By the holy tome! There are children fighting in here! This is barbaric!” Ephraim cried. The adults looked up, but the children fought on dauntless. “This is the most monstrous realm I’ve ever heard of! And under the very noses of the constables!”  
“You all right, pal?” asked a Bumpkin.  
“I most certainly am not, you pit-fiends!” Ephraim replied, speeding back out to the crowd. “Constables! Constables!”  
“Mommy, the man got a pink shirt on. It’th funny,” the bird-boy giggled.  
“Russell, get away from that man!” his mother barked, lurching over to grab her son away, clacking her beak at Ephraim. “You dumb-ass zombie-cops, you wanna hassle somebody, maybe don’t worry about a couple of parents trying to do right by their kids and worry about strange men with sticks talking to children they don’t know in the street.” The two constables looked at one another, then stomped over to Ephraim.  
“Good evening, constables; I must trouble you with dire tidings,” he said. “Behind this door some low-born ruffians of your realm are cruelly forcing _children_ to _fight_ —“  
“Greetings, citizen,” said the first constable. “Name and ID.”  
“Ah. Begging your pardons, constables, but I am Ephraim Tanner’s-Son of Argelos, a wizard-adept accidentally come to your realm,” he asked. “And behind this door there are—there are—apologies, I must ask, begging your pardons, but your features are fascinating. Am I correct in guessing that you were constructed alchemically? Are you homunculi? Flesh-golems? No, no, no matter—call forth your brethren! Shatter the door! Rescue the poor young—”  
“Name and ID, citizen,” the second insisted.  
“Well, again, sir, or madam, my name is Ephraim Tanner’s-Son of Argelos,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ve recently arrived from another realm and am not entirely familiar with the folkways of Ridare. To what does ‘eyed-ee’ refer? Some sort of lens?” The constables exchanged glances with one another again, and then began to reach into their pouches-of-holding.  
“Citizen,” they began ominously in unison, but before they could complete their thought or show him whatever they were about to offer—presumably some sort of local guidebook on Ridarean customs and vernacular—a Human woman trotted out from within the fighting-arena and inserted herself between Ephraim and the constables.  
“Please, officers, I can vouch for this man,” she said. She was wearing a curious black and pink outfit of some kind of tight shiny material that looked incredibly uncomfortable to Ephraim, whose home-realms normally considered trousers to be horse-riding equipment. She also had bands of thick fabric bound around her ankles, wrists, and holding her massive head of curls out of her face.  
“Can you identify him?” the second constable demanded.  
“Well, no, but I can vouch for him,” she said. “He has a good heart, I can tell.”  
“Explain.”  
“I’m Jezzika Cannon, owner and chief instructor at the Lucky Fist Dojo; we were in the middle of a self-defense lesson with the children when he arrived, and even though he seems distressed, well, I thought his soul seems ever-so-kind. I can tell, of course; detailed knowledge of martial arts grants a wisdom of the energy flow-points throughout the body, you know.”  
“Is this true?”  
“Of course, officer. Here, my grandfather, Master Kotei Kan’nen, can tell you better than me. Grandfather! Grandfather!” Two stories up the building, a window slid open and an old man leaned out. He was wearing a flower-print robe and wore his beard as long as a master-wizard. Mistress Cannon called up to him. “Grandfather, all the noise out here isn’t bothering you, is it?”  
“Harsh cross winds disturb the fields and ruin the harvest,” he yelled back down.  
“Sorry, Grandfather,” she said with a bow. “But isn’t this young man’s energy simply the kindest you’ve ever seen? I was telling these officers that my training has taught me much of the art of reading people’s energy!”  
“Do we not read in the ancient texts of my ninja ancestors that the wise man may gauge the strength of the river by counting the lotus blossoms?” With that he closed the window, and attention turned back to Mistress Cannon, who had clasped her hands and drawn herself up into a sort of standing meditative pose that seemed to spread a calmness to the crowd, and with their fury waning, the constables were at a loss.  
“The ancient texts of the ninja have not been uploaded to our biotronic directories, only the legal codex of the Falcopolis,” said the first constable as firmly as they could, but Ephraim could tell their grey heart was no longer in it.  
“More the pity for your spiritual development, officers,” Jezzika smiled sagely. “I must write to my district representative on the city council to encourage them to amend this. For the moment, though, officers, this young man is in dire need of herbal tea, so if you will excuse us.”  
Inside, the calmness Ephraim felt seemed to leave the warrior-children unaffected, but after hearing Jezzika explain they were learning self-defense, he found himself less bothered by their sparring. On the other side of the mirrored chamber of combat, she led him up some stairs to the next floor of the building, a quiet seating area with a low table and a stove with a waiting tea kettle.  
“So,” she began. She had forced him to have a seat and was doing something with the flameless stove, harnessing some sort of controlled lightning spell to heat the water for tea. “Another refugee from another realm, are you? Fell through a hole in the world behind Syd’s, I suppose? Did he send you here?”  
“How did you know?”  
“Lucky guess,” she laughed. “It’s been an open secret in the Bronchs that any outcasts are always welcome come here. Grandfather was an immigrant himself, arrived in the Falcopolis in his youth from the Floating Prefecture, and he always keeps a few extra beds for anyone in need. He’ll enjoy meeting you later if you decide to stay; right now he’s watching his game shows.”  
“Thank you,” Ephraim said, not sure what a game-show was. Some sort of pageant of wild game caught in some forest? Surely they must have forests somewhere, mustn’t they? “That line about counting the lotus blossoms? He sounds very wise.”  
“Oh, yes, Grandfather is great at sounding wise. He makes that stuff up right off the top of his head, you know; tell them it’s from an ancient text of your ancestors and fools will believe whatever you tell them. But enough about me and Grandfather, tell me about yourself. Where are you from? Will you need to stay for long?”  
“I do apologize, madam, for bothering you so late—“  
“It’s mid-day,” she said.  
“Ah. Right. I forgot your sun exploded and thought it was night.” Ephraim glanced out the window at the Falcopolis; where there should have been sky, there was only more city, trailing off in every direction, including up. “My apologies. I had not realized how simple a realm Argelos is. For one thing, our idea of a city only spreads out horizontally. How many spell-casters must live here to cast all these glowing runes…and your self-motive carriages. And centralized alchemy. I passed a public-house that serves naught but mushrooms. Beside it was a haberdashery with a hundred tunics in colors beyond any rainbow I have ever seen, perused by Orcs and Halflings together. Nary a horse or steed to be seen yet everyone is wearing riding-breeches. And I’m fairly sure your constables are some sort of war-forged homunculus.”  
“Oh, the Falcozoids? Just vat-grown clones of the Lord Falconer tuned for strength and speed at the cost of being able to think for themselves. Leave them be as much as you can, their biotronic brains aren’t good at anything besides following rulebooks to the letter, and there are rumors the Central Municipal Citadel has been experimenting with giving them breath-weapons or wings or something.”  
“Ah,” said Ephraim simply.  
“I suppose it does sound a little funny to say it all at once like that,” she chuckled. “Not all the Realms of Ridare’s crags are like this; the Falcopolis is a very advanced place. You might have been more comfortable if you’d arrived in Neo-Barbaria or the City of the Serpent-Lords…unless you don’t care for Serpent-Lords either.”  
“I beg your pardon, mistress, I did not mean to complain,” Ephraim said. At some point the tea had been poured and a cup appeared in his hands without his noticing; he sipped and found it refreshing in a mild and tingling way that he infinitely preferred to the Green Cauldron Energy Potion. “Simply very different, but I suppose every realm must do things in their own way. I must ask—Argelos has been threatened by any number of vile dark wizards campaigning to destroy the world for some reason or other, but none have ever won the day. Did Ridare not have a, erm, Valiant Circle of Champions or something? A party of heroes of diverse origins and alignments that bands together to, I don’t know, collect some Crystals of Destiny, reforge an Ancient Blade of Unity, toss a phylactery into a cursed volcano? I’ve made studies of other realms and evil spell-casters are constantly imperiling them, but this is the first time I’ve heard of one successfully disintegrating an entire world. This realm seems so tenacious and advanced, I would have thought the heroes would be so as well.”  
“Oh, they were, it’s just so were the villains. We had the Heroes of Yore, they just failed.”  
“Faugh,” Ephraim said. “You surprise me.”  
“Now look, Ephraim Tannerson, you didn’t come here for a history lesson.” This wasn’t precisely true, he wanted to hear all about it, but he had to admit he had other questions as well, and some more pressing than others. “You told those Falcozoids you say you accidentally came to the Falcopolis from your own realm, and you asked Syd for a place to go instead of going home, so I’m betting you’re stuck here. You’re welcome to stay in our spare rooms as long as you need and we have communal meals at breakfast and dinner, although I hope you’ll pitch in when you can. Normally I would offer a change of clothes, but I’m afraid our stash is a bit low on your size.”  
“I am but a humble scholar, miss, my robes will be garb enough,” he said. “In fact, your realm is fascinating and I hope to learn more about it, but if Phase Spiders are known in this world, I could be in my own bed by sundown—I am loathe to take alms from the mouths of those that truly need them.”  
“You see? I knew I was right about you,” Jezzika smiled. “The bad news is I’ve certainly never heard of Phase Spiders. When Ridare was destroyed, many lands were saved by some hero or deity or other, but not everyone was so lucky. A number of races of creature mentioned in the old bestiaries are unknown today. Grandfather keeps a study of books in the room just down the hall there that you’re welcome to look through if you think it would help.”  
“If it’s no trouble,” Ephraim grinned, leaping to his feet. The prospect of studying another realm’s books of magic was an opportunity even the most slothful wizard could not keep calm at, and Ephraim was a great one for books, the rarer the better.  
“Oh, certainly,” Jezzika said. “Would you care to have a shower first?”  
“A…shower? Have you harnessed weather-magic as well?”  
“Personally, no, although we do have the Weather-Wizard Bureau—but I just meant maybe you’d like to bathe first,” she said. “The shared bathroom for our guests is just through here.” She opened a door to a room filled with oblong ceramic edifices—a chair, a basin, and a chamber, each mounted with handles or nozzles of sword-bright steel. She seemed to recognize his bewilderment and demonstrated by manipulating a handle in the tall chamber, summoning from the highest nozzle a shower of rain.  
“Indoor weather magic!” Ephraim mused. “Ablutive Barrier is a fine spell, but to cast it at will in your own chambers? With waters whose temperature you may bend to your merest whim? A wondrous realm indeed, Mistress Jezzika. Did you grant some god a favor, or are these common?”  
“Most houses and some businesses, yes,” she said. She cleared her throat. “And, well, we use them fairly often.”  
“And why wouldn’t you! If I had such a thing in my chambers in Argelos, I should take my ablutions every morning and again every evening…ah. And your people do, do they?”  
“Usually just once a day, but yes.”  
“So I suppose a wizard-adept with only one set of robes and little time between his studies to take an hour’s walk to the river may be rather…ah.”  
“Shall I leave you to it?”  
“Once I am proficient in the devices’ use, modesty does rather invite solitude in such matters,” he smiled meekly. “What is the purpose of this porcelain throne?” He lifted the lid. “A cistern of fresh drinking-water right in your chambers!”  
“No!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Items and encounters appearing:  
> • Wizard that waves his staff and yells things to try and discover new spells: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/185404864053/  
> • Ceiling tile lurkers (mentioned) https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/188800590259/  
> • Jezzika Cannon: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/190088334064/  
> • Ablutive Barrier (mentioned): https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/178196636708/


	3. The Night Is Young & So Am I

Jezzika showed Ephraim to the room that was to be his, then left him to his ablutions. Bathing by using a steel lever to summon an indoor waterfall was a new experience, but novel and fascinating to a young wizard out to see what other realms had to offer; it occurred to him that if someone as kind as Mistress Jezzika found odor objectionable, he could do well to see if there were any similar magical chambers for the automatic laundering of garments as well. He girt his loins and chest with the well-worn towel to take the short strides to his room. Once there, before he put his robes back on, he took a moment to practice with the tiny lever Jezzika had shown him set into the wall controlled a light-casting spell, magically lighting or dispelling an orb of lightning on the ceiling that acted as the room’s candle or torch. Again, Jezzika had acted as if this was the most mundane thing in the world, and Ephraim flicked it repeatedly, amazed that it seemed to have no daily limit. There came a knock at the door, and he quickly donned his spectacles and robe—minus the Tunic of Spider Command, which seemed not to the liking of fashionable Falcopolitans.  
Opening the door, he found a red-crested female orc in a slim tunic and more of those coarse blue breeches, carrying a black-mitred human skull.  
“Yaaa—“ the orc snarled.  
“Ye gods! Uh— **Burning Hands!** ” Ephraim squealed, attempting to cast the first attack-spell he could think of, but instead of a flame shooting out from his fingertips, his hands themselves caught fire. The orc seemed more surprised than aggressive, so Ephraim ran past and doused his hands in the bathing-chamber.  
“I was gonna say, ‘ya the new guy Jezz mentioned, Ephraim?’” the orc asked him.  
“Leave me be, you tusked beast—“  
“Well, he’s a fiery one. Ha!” cackled the skull. Ephraim screamed again; there was nowhere to run, as the orc was blocking the door.  
“Noisy little dude, isn’t he?” the orc asked the head. “Must be from one of those really shouty dimensions. Elemental Plane of Yelling.”  
“Maybe so, but that’s no excuse for racist language,” the skull said. “But, I guess if we want him not to judge you on preconceptions of your skin and culture, maybe we shouldn’t judge him by our own. Hey, little guy, is this just how you greet people in your homeworld? Lots of yelling?”  
“Erm—no, my apologies, but I was actually far more startled by your appearance than hers,” Ephraim lied, tending to his singed fingers and wishing he had brought some healing-potions. “Are you—ah—well, sir?”  
“Oh! I see the problem,” laughed the skull. “Before she went back to her class downstairs Miss Cannon did warn us that our new guest is from a less-developed realm than Ridare. He might not be used to magic or technology as powerful as ours. That fire-spell he just cast might be the work of the most powerful caster in all his realm!”  
“No, no, we have heaps of powerful magic back in Argelos, I am but a student,” Ephraim said, welling up a tinge of wounded national pride. He took his staff from the corner where it was leaning so he could look more wizardly. “And just there, I have the Tunic of Spider Command, which grants the wearer the power to exert telepathic control over every spider within my grasp.”  
“That sounds handy,” smirked the orc.  
“It is,” Ephraim said.  
“Speaking of which, my son, hold forth your hands,” the skull said. “ **Cure Light Wounds**. I’m Brother Kyu, I’m a cleric specializing in healing magicks. Jelly and I are fellow guests in Miss Cannon’s menagerie of the miserable, ha ha, and while you were showering she said we should come say hi and then show you to her grandfather’s library to see if you can find some book you’re looking for while she finishes up today’s classes.” The pair lead him to another chamber of the castle—no, not a castle, actually a fairly humble building of residence, Ephraim could scarcely imagine what the palace of the Lord Falconer must look like—to a small room with every surface covered in shelves, stocked messily with books. There did not seem to be any particular arrangement to them, and he found himself turning them upright and smoothing out creases as he looked for one that might be useful. **Locate Tome** , he cast, with no result. **Sort By Subject.** He realized that the orc and the bodiless healer were going to stand there watching him, so he idly continued the conversation while he looked.  
“If you’re such a good healer, where is your body?” Ephraim asked, his burns healed. He was a bit embarrassed at not having any healing spells of his own prepared, but he had not expected to be in a position to need them.  
“Oh, gone. Penance from my god,” he explained. “A few years ago I was in a party of clerics that were supposed to be guarding the temple during a raid by the Falcopolis’ Idolclastors; they kicked our asses, and before our god escaped into the Realms Beyond he cast Living Sunder on me as punishment, then took my legs and trunk to snack on. So, I have devoted my un-life to healing people to spite him.”  
“What about your arms?”  
“He turned them into weasels, since he said they might as well be for all the good I had done with them.”  
“Where are they now?”  
“Oh, long gone. I couldn’t control them or anything, they were just regular weasels.”  
“But why were the protectors of the Falcopolis raiding your temple? Hardly sounds a deed for heroes of the realm.” The orc snorted a laugh.  
“The Idolclastors are not perfect,” Brother Kyu began, “but honestly, I can’t really blame them. Not in our case, ha. We had abducted a _lot_ of virgins to sacrifice to summon an army of skinless kickboxers to smite the unbelievers and conquer the Realms of Ridare. Manducus the Snarl-Father—that’s the god’s name—he really only needed three to thrice-bathe his idol in blood, but I guess he wanted to have options.”  
“Gods,” the orc said with a roll of her eyes like she was complaining about a finicky pet cat or a priggish governess.  
“Yeah, you know. Sounded perfectly reasonable at the time—gods really have a way with words—but saying it like that, you can hardly blame the Lord Falconer for sending Baron Blasteroth and the Two-Tone Knights to dispose of us. It’s not a fun life I lead today, but honestly I probably got what I deserved.”  
“What about you, orc?” Ephraim asked.  
“Again, not a big fan of the tone, human,” she answered.  
“Ah—my apologies. In my realm, our races are rather at war. Have been since our gods forged the world. I’m not even sure why, to be honest.” He chuckled, trying to sound good-natured about it.  
“Polo shirts that let you talk to spiders and now centuries of ethnic war? Really selling the old home-town, aren’t you?” she said. “The Lord Falconer and the Duke of Teeth might not like each other, but it’s mostly socio-economic rivalries rather than something about skin color. I mean, my dad doesn’t exactly _like_ humans or anything…”  
“No, he doesn’t at that,” Brother Kyu laughed. He and she chuckled, sharing some private joke.  
“Well, anyway, little dude, I’m Jelly,” she said, forcibly shaking him by the hands. “I don’t do much as useful as healing-magic, but if you ever need mechanical engineering advice or a baking recipe, I’m your girl.”  
“Mechanical engineering?”  
“Yeah, I work down at Scrumptius Industries in the design team for the Stop-n-Quaff machines. My most recent work has been researching food-safe coatings to ensure flow consistency, so if you’ve ever got a metal pipe that you’re trying to figure out the best way to get oatmeal through, let me know.”  
“I hope I’m not intruding, but in this realm, is ‘Jelly’ a common name for orcs?”  
“In full, Aandzheliik K’tryn’teriis L’Phiild'Grozhaak L’skaamos, but please, call me Jelly, it’s easier for everyone,” she said. “Just living here because my dad kicked me out for, uh, consorting with a human.”  
“Weren’t you just insulting Argelos for the races being at war?”  
“Yeah, but I mean, like, _consorting_ , you know?” she said. “We’ve gotten beyond my guys smacking your guys around with clubs while you poke us with swords, but that doesn’t mean certain old-fashioned types are okay with…you know. _Consorting_.” It wasn’t a word Ephraim had ever had much use for, but he happened to have his hand on a dictionary.  
“To keep company with; to agree with?”  
“Uh…yeah, basically,” Jelly said, her cheeks flushing a darker green. Ephraim had never imagined that orcs _could_ blush, much less that he would ever see it. Before he could embarrass himself again, he changed the subject.  
“I am simply unable to find anything in this rat’s nest of a library,” he stated. “Mistress Jezzika’s grandfather sounds a wise man, but I hope he completes his watching of his game show soon; either his cataloging system is too esoteric for my untrained eye or there isn’t one. These shelves are more gorged with tomes than any nobleman’s library in Argelos, but not a bestiary or grimoire in sight. Mostly the memoirs of diverse freelance constables investigating clandestine murders, or handsome barristers’ trials at court and at home. Are these all true? What in the world is a Tome of Dark Ass?” From above them there came a few loud bangs.  
“Who’s that touching my stuff?” asked an old man’s voice, coming down from the next floor up. “Jezzika? Where’s my horchata?”  
“She’s downstairs with her class, Mr. Cannon,” Brother Kyu called up the stairs.  
“Ha! First all that noise outside and now I can tell with my magical ninja senses that somebody’s messing with my stuff,” he said. Ephraim straightened. “Another out-of-towner, eh? These beds never stay empty long. I wish Syd would patch that portal; I never turn away someone that needs help, but all the same I wish there were fewer of you. Attracts too much attention!”  
“I beg your leave, sir, but as I told your grand-daughter, I am loathe to take bread from the mouths of those that need it, and require but a reliable tome of magicks to be on my way,” Ephraim shouted. “Are Phase Spiders known in your realms, sir? Would I be wiser to consult a beastmaster?”  
“You’re from one of those fancy-talking realms, huh?” yelled Mr. Cannon. “Look, I’m not really a wise old man, I’m more of a wise-ass. Only magic I got is a crack in the floorboards that lets me see when somebody’s messing with my stuff!” Ephraim looked up and could see a thin crack in the ceiling. “Yeah, I see you. Nice hair. You could try Beastmaster Eddie’s down on Route 23, just make sure to cast True Seeing on anything he tries to sell you.” Jezzika poked her head up from downstairs.  
“What’s all the racket up here?” she said. “I suppose you two warned Ephraim that touching the books would rile Grandfather up.”  
“It’s basically dinner time anyway, he always needs a few minutes to get ready,” Jelly said. She forcibly handed Brother Kyu to Ephraim and patted her hands free of the evil-scented dust that seemed to accrue in the undead cleric’s aura. At the lightning-machine where Jezzika had conjured tea, the orc began preparing a pan of something, retrieving ingredients from another frost-chamber.  
“That’s true. ” Jezzika said. “Well, I see you’ve all met. Hi, hon.” She kissed the orc on the cheek; Jelly blushed still deeper.  
“Ohhh, _consorting!_ ” Ephraim said.  
“Uh,” Jezzika said, the first time Ephraim had seen her off-balance.  
“Came up in one of your grandfather’s books,” said Brother Kyu, “and our new friend was unfamiliar with the term.”  
“Well, I see you’ve all been busy,” said Jezzika. “Have you found what you needed? Surely out of all these books you ought to be able to find some kind of manual of monsters or folio of fiends or something silly like that.”  
“No, unfortunately, I haven’t,” Ephraim said. “Back in Argelos, a collection this size would rival most academy’s libraries, but I see nothing with the name ‘bestiary’; what encyclopedias and dictionaries I can find do not mention the Phase Spider. I fear either they were never known in this world, or when cataclysm struck, they used their dimensional-door abilities to escape and have not been back since.”  
“Jezzika!” Mr. Cannon cried from upstairs. “I smell fajitas! Do we have any guacamole?”  
“Yes, Grandfather. We always do,” Jezzika called up to him. “Ephraim, do they have fajitas and guacamole in your homeworld?”  
“Mostly stew and meat-pies,” he said. “Is it one of those?” Jelly laughed loud. “Exotic names to my ears. Traditional meals of your grandfather’s youth in the Floating Prefecture?”  
“Oh, no—to the public he plays the part of the old martial-arts master, but he really hates that stuff,” Jezzika said. “Baja Calurosan is his favorite; he gets guacamole at most of his meals. I mush his pills up in it. You guys want to have dinner on the roof tonight? Ephraim should really see the view.”

Mr. Cannon elected not to join the others on the roof, preferring to take his meals before a cubical object called a ‘teller-vision’ whose surface glowed with moving images of figures and faces trying to guess what word the other was thinking of; Ephraim wasn’t sure if this was the ‘game show’ and took it for some sort of idol or altar at which the old man stared meditatively, interspersed with attempts at guessing the words. Ephraim attempted to introduce himself, but was waved off. Upstairs the roof was already set with a wooden table and some soft chairs, as well as another cubical plastic object that Jezzika manipulated via levers and knobs until it began producing music from nowhere—no simple music box, but a full band of musicians, many of them using instruments Ephraim could scarcely imagine.  
“Are there tiny minstrels inside here, or is this being channeled from some music-hall?” Ephraim asked.  
“It’s just tapes, man,” Jelly said. Beside the little box she showed him a stack of flat tiles that clattered against one another as she presented them. Ephraim was supposed to be helping to set the table, but had become distracted first by the sprawling views of the Falcopolis, massive and luminous in every direction, and now by the music-box, so Jezzika arranged the plates around the table, chuckling good-heartedly at his enthusiasm. Jelly set out a sizzling pan of cutlets and sliced vegetables and another of thin flatbreads, as well as ramekins of herbs and green paste. Brother Kyu went without a plate but still took a place at the table, saying he enjoyed smelling it even if he was without gullet or bowel to partake properly. From another small frost-chamber, Jezzika produced brown glass bottles of ale and passed them around.  
“Tapes are unknown magic in Argelos,” Ephraim said as they all sat down. “Frost-chambers, too. Undead clerics we are not without, but I fear a young and lawful student should not be likely to break bread with you.”  
“Your realm sounds super uptight, man,” Jelly said. Ephraim followed her and Jezzika’s models for how to sup upon the fajitas.  
“It is that, if I comprehend the word,” Ephraim said. “Argelos is indeed up and tight.”  
“So you’re a student wizard there?” Jezzika said. “If you decide to stay, you might be able to enroll at the Academy and keep up with your studies.”  
“That would be excellent,” he said. “I seem adept and finding my way with magical items and creatures, but I know few spells of my own. Poison Spray, Burning Hands—although it didn’t work quite as I had hoped—Conjure Lesser Fey…I’m hoping to develop an olfactory version of Arcane Eye castable by lower-level spell-wielders such as myself, but that’s a long way off.” He sighed a little at his ignorance and changed the subject. “So this music-box—how does it work?” He began to manipulate the knobs and lever on the box to experiment with the music, but was scolded and told it required training; his unskilled manipulation of the device had caused its maw to open and the magic tile Jelly had inserted to bleed black ribbons.  
“No big deal, man, but maybe don’t just start messing with electronics you don’t know anything about,” she smiled gently, making some kind of adjustments to the tile with a wooden stylus.  
“A thousand pardons, madame,” he said. “Are you inscribing it with sigils to re-cast the magicks?”  
“No, just winding the tape back in,” she said. Ephraim was about to remark that he had never been in a world where orcs were more adept at technology than humans, but stopped himself. He was in a new realm now and was going to have to learn not to make such remarks. (At that, mayhap the orcs of Argelos didn’t appreciate such remarks either.)  
“So these Idolclastors that defend the Falcopolis,” he said. “Are there orcs among their ranks? Undead clerics? Bird-men?”  
“Oh, yes, absolutely, they are just as varied as the civilians,” said Brother Kyu. “Maybe more so because so many things happen to them while they’re out on adventures. Is Captain Gorgon really a Gorgon? All the pictures I’ve seen look like they’re just regular tentacles on the back of her head.”  
“She’s green and scaly, I’m not sure what other race has prehensile fleshy dreads on the backs of their heads,” Jelly said. “Jezz, you’ve never met the famous Captain Amelia ‘Flash’ Gorgon, have you?”  
“Once,” Jezzika laughed, as though it were some long-standing in-joke. “A few years ago a Kilopudding leaked up from the drain you see right down there, Ephraim. Do they have slime-beasts where you’re from?” He looked over the ledge and saw, a few stories down, a grated circular hole in the concrete. “They’re attracted to damp, dank places, and that year somebody at the Weather Bureau had turned up the humidity too high—“  
“So you _do_ have wizards that control the weather?” he asked.  
“Yeah, of course,” Jelly said. “God, can you imagine living somewhere where it was randomized? Yeesh. That sounds terrible.”  
“Anyway, Oozes were an especially big problem that year, and the Snot Patrol—sorry, the Bureau of Bio-Film Control—was understaffed because of budget cuts, so they were way behind schedule,” Jezzika went on. “By the time they got out to a poor working-class place like the Bronchs, the Kilopudding had already budded and its Millipuddings had cross-bred with the sewer-bears, and I remember it was seven in the morning and I had just finished sweeping out the dojo for the morning when out from that drain right there popped those awful Gelatinous Cubs—“  
“Oh, yeah, and then the Ink men came after them,” Jelly chuckled, “some Black Puddings had found some skeletons down there and bonded with them and were walking around being all creepy—“  
“Sorry, why were there so many skeletons in your sewer?” Ephraim asked.  
“Well, not _that_ many,” she said. “Organized crime, I guess? Maybe they were old; this place is full of old dungeons. Look, you go deep enough in the sewers in any good-sized city, you’re going to find some skeletons.”  
“Anyway, by that time it was pretty clear that the Snot Patrol was never going to be able to handle it, so the city called out the Idolclastors,” Jezzika went on. “You can see some corrosion on the air vents there? Some of the Cubs got into the system from below and got all the way up here. And then you see that Noidelberry’s Restaurant across the street there? They built that because a whole building had to be torn down because an Urban Kraken came up through the plumbing system.”  
“Who’d you get?” Brother Kyu asked.  
“Let’s see…well, I didn’t _meet_ Captain Gorgon, but I did see her up close and helped her get some kids to safety, and I’m sorry but I didn’t notice if her hair is snakes or just tentacles; she was holding a sword in each of them to take down a whole swarm of Inkmen at the time,” said Jezzika. “Who else was there…oh, the ranger Patella McGee and her giant jackalope Mr. Yeager were there, and Esfaera Kugel the Orb-Witch fought some Inkmen just down the way, and I think I saw one of the Marrow Brothers. Which one’s the necromancer? Caesero? No, he’s the clown.”  
“Jorjero, I think?” Jelly guessed.  
“Well, whichever. He took control of the skeletons and really pissed off the Kilopudding that was commanding the Inkmen,” Jezzika said. “I remember Feralyn the Barbarian was there and she was really excited to kill the Inkmen because she got to keep all the skulls.”  
“What did she do with them?” Ephraim asked.  
“She collects her enemies’ skulls,” Jezzika explained. “I think she’s building a throne out of them.”  
“That sounds really uncomfortable,” said Brother Kyu.  
“How would you know? How long has it been since you even had an ass?” Jelly said. They all laughed, Ephraim more because everyone else was doing it than because he could see any humor in a dismembered living corpse’s inability to judge the comfort of a throne made of skulls. For all the glories of the Realms of Ridare, danger certainly abounded, and the privilege of living here was bought with constant vigilance.  
“These people sound a raucous crew, but necessary,” Ephraim hazarded when the joke had died down. “It seems to me that all good folk of the realm must take up arms against the forces of evil and destruction. Have any of you ever thought of joining their ranks?”  
“Eh, it’s a lot of paperwork,” Jelly said. “Plus, like I said, my main jobs are industrial engineering and a bit of cooking. Neither one is much help when a squadron of Biocopters are horking venom-bombs in your face.”  
“Not directly, but even these Idolclastors must sup somewhiles,” Ephraim said. “I, erm, know little about industrial engineering, but I’m sure it is a noble and useful trade. And you, Mistress Cannon, by trade a combat instructor.”  
“Technically, we train in the martial arts in hopes that we never have to use them,” she said.  
“What about that double-bladed staff thing you show off with occasionally?” Jelly asked. “As lethal as it is deadly, I’d have thought.”  
“You mean secret?” Brother Kyu asked.  
“Sorry, right—Ephraim, it’s a secret that it’s as lethal as it is deadly,” she said.  
“Fine, yes, Grandfather trained me in the forbidden art of the Jogekama-Yari, a double-bladed staff as _secret_ as it is deadly,” Jezzika said. “But, like I said, it’s forbidden, so we get pestered enough already by his old ninja clan for him teaching it to me without me then going out and holding open classes for entry-level monster-hunters. And by ‘pester’ I mean they try and kill him. Poison darts through the window, that sort of thing.”  
“By the sacred tome! Have you not alerted the constables?”  
“Oh, sure, we have, but they’re not great at finding regular criminals, so I’d be pretty shocked if they could put a stop to an international guild of assassins,” Jezzika said. “It would really be more of a job for the Idolclastors, but since it’s a covert personal threat and not a public safety thing, we’d have to pay for it ourselves, and the dojo is barely…” She paused, sniffing the air. “Say, does anybody else smell ozone?”  
“Oh boy,” Brother Kyu said.  
“I don’t know the term ‘ozone’, but I do detect the telltale odour of magical workings,” Ephraim said. “Will some kindly spell-caster be joining our party, or is something more sinister afoot?”  
“Probably the second one,” Jelly sighed. “Jezz, I think it’s my turn. You want me to go press the thing?”  
“Not yet, let’s see what—oh, yes, there, just along the edge of the Bronchusworks’ security field, somebody’s got a slashgate opening,” Jezzika said, pointing. Down on the street, blades of ethereal flame were piercing existence and carving a portal in space itself.  
“By the tome,” Ephraim whispered. As the portal opened, first there stampeded a swarm of what looked like Dire Unicorns in disharmonious livery, each mounted by a sort of Bullywug or Slaad, one clammy hand on the reins of its mount, the other waving a sort of steel Wand of Blasting that issued thunderous retorts as it belched shaftless arrowheads at fantastic velocities. Once at least two-score of these were rampaging through the streets, another figure emerged from the portal, astride a levitating stone head from whose mouth there issued a continuous scream; the figure was a rune-graven black obelisk surrounded by a mass of writhing tentacles held in rough approximation of a humanoid figure.  
“Yes, hi, this is Jezzika Cannon, I’m calling from the Bronchs,” she was saying into yet another plastic device mounted on the wall behind her, “We’ve got about two dozen Undertoads riding Pipsisewahs, and a Living Obelisk as well. Looks like they’re going to try and attack the Bronchusworks. I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up, it’s riding a big screaming head. Hmm? Made of stone, I think. That high a threat level! Well, well. All right, thank you very much. Goodbye.” She pressed a button on the device and returned to her friends. “Ephraim, you’re in for a treat. I’ve just reported this to the Idolclastors’ Guild, and since the Bronchusworks are such important infrastructure, they will be sending a good-sized team of their best.”  
“Should we get inside, maybe?” Jelly asked. “Just in case the Living Obelisk decides to cast Acid Hurricane or Greater Mass Head Explodey or something?”  
“Nah, it’s fine, it closed the slashgate behind it and Pipsisewahs can’t climb, so we’ll be fine up here,” Kyu said. Jelly picked him up to give him a better view. “See? It’s concentrating its incantations on dispelling the security field. As long as the Undertoads don’t sprout wings, we should be fine.”  
“Are we not worried about its mount, the screaming decapitated Stone Giant?” Ephraim asked.  
“Yeah, that’s a new one to me,” Jelly said. “Any idea?”  
“Ooh, yes, I think that is a Ki-Kiai Kephaskephalos,” the cleric said. “Not the most dangerous kind of Kephaskephalos, but hard to say how long it’s been charging. Essentially, the longer it can hold that note, the more force-damage its eventual beam attack will deal.”  
“Mistress Cannon, I heard you instruct that plastic speaking-horn that you suspect they are here to assay destruction against the facility there,” Ephraim said. “What is their quarrel here?”  
“Oh, they hate us,” Jezzika explained. “You see, Living Obelisks are powerful clerics of the Squid-Messiahs that reside in the Etheric Abyss. Deities are sustained by belief, and the fact that Falcopolitans don’t worship their gross old gods just makes them so mad that they periodically try to murder us all to ingratiate themselves.”  
“What do they worship in the Falcopolis?”  
“Technically the Falcon-God Habukaz, whose living avatar is the Lord-Falconer that rules the city, but it’s mostly a holiday thing,” she said. “It’s not that we have a problem with other religions, please don’t think that, it’s just the monster-worshiping cults. Although I guess they say that about us.” She sighed deeply and took another swig of ale with a glance down at the street. “Boy, those Pipsisewahs are certainly doing a number on the storefronts down there. I hope Syd is paid up on his insurance!”  
“Surely we cannot stand here and watch them wreak a swath of destruction upon this blessed city, my lady,” Ephraim said. He butted his staff on the floor. “We may be but little against such a horde, but surely the time has come to rise up!”  
“Probably ought to let the professionals deal with it, man,” Jelly said.  
“They are taking their time, though, aren’t they?” Brother Kyu asked. Across the street there was an echoing hum as the Bronchusworks’ defense shield dispersed into embers. Above the battle-chatter of the Undertoads and the sustained cry of the Kephaskephalos, the Living Obelisk made an awful retching cough that must be its eldritch rendition of a villain’s cackle.  
“Now or never, friends!” Ephraim rushed to the edge of the roof and leveled his staff at the Living Obelisk. “Erm— **Conjure Lesser Fey!** ” Surrounding the Kephaskephalos there appeared half a dozen Butter Fairies, slathering their viscous grease on everything around them.  
“Ephraim,” Jezzika gasped. One of the Pipsisewahs slipped in the butter and flailed comically as its rider went flying, but no more good came of it. While the Living Obelisk’s surface was covered in naught but inscrutable runes, it turned and Ephraim felt its attention honing in on his spell. It slithered its tendrils in what must have been its equivalent of a mystical gesture prefiguring a spell.  
“Oh, faugh,” he said. Before anything could come of it, the smell of ozone again filled the air and another slashgate appeared, this one just at the edge of Jezzika’s rooftop and issuing forth a glamorously-clad woman Ephraim would have guessed from her fine but scanty garb to be a courtesan. She stood gracefully atop a hovering orb and circled by several spheres of light and energy like ioun stones. Her first action was to clobber the Living Obelisk with a barrage of spiked metal orbs; thanks to the Butter Fairies, it lost its grip and fell off the Kephaskephalos. She tried to hold her heroic resolve but snickered through it.  
“Esfaera Kugel, Idolclastor First Class! Hold your applause for just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, I need to get this Albitarial Gem down that thing’s throat,” the woman said. “Won’t take a second. Feralyn, heads up!” At street level, more slashgates had opened, depositing Idolclastors across the city block, and Madame Kugel tossed a tremendous cut-crystal sphere over the ledge to a jaguar-pelt-clad woman as muscular as a blacksmith, who caught the crystal orb and quickly rammed it into the Kephaskephalos’ mouth before it could let fly with its energy beam. The gem absorbed the energy completely; the muscular woman snatched it back, singeing her fingers, and hurled it with all the power of her pumpkin-sized biceps into the Living Obelisk. The orb shattered, unleashing an explosion of energy that made powder of the pavement, broke every window in a two-block radius (and Ephraim’s ale-bottle), and visibly cracked the Obelisk, who howled curses in some forbidden tongue.  
“Now,” said Madame Kugel, returning to the rooftop on her riding-orb, “which one of you summoned a handful of Butter Fairies to combat a Living Obelisk?” Ephraim meekly raised his hand. “Really thought that would be a good move, did you? We really prefer you leave this stuff to us pros. Technically you could get in a lot of trouble for engaging with that thing; if he had finished the incantation for Storm Of Strikes, everyone on this roof would have been flattened. Fighting monsters without a license is no joke.”  
“Please, ma’am, he’s only recently arrived from another realm, and just wanted to help,” Jezzika said.  
“Indeed! Do we not read in the ancient texts of Argelos that one must offer aid whensoever it is needed?” Ephraim said.  
“Hmm. Well, like I said, ‘technically’ he could get in trouble,” she said. “Luckily for him, he’s cute and I’m Chaotic-Good. If anybody asks, I’ll try and distract them with how hilarious it was to see a Living Obelisk lose its footing. Well, I really should get back to it. Enjoy your visit to the Falcopolis!” With that she back-flipped over the ledge, and moments later appeared on her riding-orb throwing grenades of blue lightning at the rampaging Pipsisewahs.  
“Quite a turnout today,” Jezzika smiled. “Look, there’s Baron Blasteroth, the Tiefling demolitions expert, and there butting the Undertoad off its mount, there’s Rauchen Ziege, the dapperest goat-man in all the land. Oh, and there’s Devyn Wrath! She’s one of our most famous Idolclastors, famous for using unusual weaponry and equipment. Looks like she’s got one of those experimental monowheel cycles and—whoops, there she goes over the edge of the crag. I’m sure she’ll be fine, she must get thrown around during enough fights that she must wear some kind of Amulet of Feather Fall or something, I would hope.” Ephraim watched as a horned iron skeleton emerged from an alleyway, rippling with green ooze and brandishing a spiked pole-axe.  
“Should someone—“ Ephraim began to ask.  
“He’s one of ours, Ectoplasmodeus,” Jelly said. Atop a wave of green slime, the figure attacked one of the Pipsisewahs and knocked its rider off, engulfing it; in a rage the mount attempted to gore the Idolclastor. Its thundering attack tore away chunks of ooze but missed the skeleton completely, and he continued to stab at it with the pole-axe.  
“He’d better be careful, or—yep, there it goes,” Brother Kyu said. The Pipsisewah landed a solid blow and suddenly Ectoplasmodeus collapsed into a sticky pile of bones in a puddle of slime. “I had been wondering what paralyzing venom would do to someone like him. Well, I know she said we should stay out of it, but what else are we doing? Ephraim’s inspired me. Jelly, aim me, would you? **Remove Paralysis**!” The skeleton and the slime began reconstituting themselves, looking this way and that wondering who had helped it before giving up and returning to the fight.  
“Excellent,” Ephraim laughed.  
“Yeah, radical,” Jelly added. Ephraim thought he detected a sardonic tone but couldn’t place why it would be there.  
“This really isn’t a bad one,” Jezzika said, leaning on the ledge and taking a swig of her ale. “Were any of you in the Falcopolis when the cult of the Giant Fraithwarp attacked the Nephroplex Water Treatment Plant with an army of Living Lakes filled with undead sharks?” Jelly shook her head. Brother Kyu laughed.  
“That was back when I had a body, and I remember a lot of us evil cultists had a good chuckle about those dopes around the unholy water cooler,” he said. “I mean, I get it. Who would have thought undead sharks still need a saline environment? Still, you would think they’d have checked before they got there. If they had brought a Walking Sea they could have torn that place apart. Falcopolitans would have had nothing but sewage and shark-ghosts coming out of every faucet and fountain for weeks.”  
“Oh, and look, there’s Mechanical Knax Johnson,” Jelly said, pointing out a wiry clockwork creature raging on the Living Obelisk with humongous spiked fists. “He was a Human adventurer years ago but he got killed when the Orange Horrors hit Jasconius Depot Prime with a Hyakulegger Entomarquess, but Dr. Requiem got permission to put his brain into a combat-construct. They had some trouble connecting him up properly, but it looks like he’s got the hang of it—whoops, no, he’s malfunctioned and now he’s punching Feralyn. She’ll not appreciate that.” Jezzika and Brother Kyu chuckled like that was the sort of thing that one can expect to happen now and then.  
“Well, this is all very exciting, but I probably ought to head downstairs,” Jezzika said. “Grandfather’s old clan likes to use attacks like this as a distraction to try and kill him. He hasn’t taught any of you any forbidden ninja techniques, has he? No? Good, you’ll be fine up here.”  
“You want some help?” Jelly asked.  
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I just hope it’s not that one ninja made entirely of snakes that are each proficient in a different weapon so he can swap them out and switch between weapons. I _hate_ that guy.”  
“Let’s come give you some help,” Jelly said.  
“Yeah, couldn’t hurt,” Jezzika said. “Ephraim, you coming, or would you rather stay here and watch them wrap things up down there?”  
“Surely it isn’t over yet?” Ephraim asked. The Kephaskephalos had crashed into a fire hydrant, around which the Butter Fairies were dancing. The Living Obelisk was casting bolts of necrotic energy wildly as Ectoplasmodeus tried to snare its manifold arms into a knot; Knax Johnson seemed to have switched sides again and threw an entire Pipsisewah at the thing. Esfaera Kugel was wielding an Orb of Devouring, chasing after an Undertoad that had successfully shot her in the arm; Brother Kyu cast Cure Moderate Wounds at her. She gave them a thumbs up as she caught her assailant and throttled it well.  
“Come on, we can get some dessert,” Jelly called from the stairway. “What flavors of ice cream do they have back in Argelos?”  
“Why would you make ice out of cream?” he asked. They all laughed at him.  
“You stay and watch and we’ll bring you up something,” Jezzika smiled. He nodded and turned back to the scene on the street.  
“I will join you soon,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Items and encounters appearing:  
> • Cleric being punished by his god: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/177828103006/encounter-low-level-cleric  
> • Team of skinless footballers: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/181267876150/encounter-a-team-of-flayed-footballers  
> • Tome of Dark Ass: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/171846381355/  
> • Spell: Conjure Lesser Fey: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/185836581424/ and https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/186137626439/  
> • Kilopuddings hint at the existence of the much larger Gigapudding https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/181282087241/  
> • Gelatinous Cubs: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/175401235601/  
> • Inkmen: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/174836772739/  
> • Urban Kraken: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/190281321849/ and https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/175741084231/  
> • Captain Amelia “Flash” Gorgon: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/190245550809/ and https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/186079205213/  
> • Patella McGee & Mr. Yeager: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/181290339318/  
> • Esfaera Kugel, Orb Witch: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/182041544877/  
> • Biocopters: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/182812008062/  
> • Pipsisewahs: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/177618228448/  
> • Undertoads: very loosely based on https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Moon-beast  
> • Living Obelisk: (totally made it up)  
> • Ki-Kiai Kephaskephalos: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/180910623633/  
> • Albitarial Gem: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/189243779104/  
> • Feralyn: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/181675778796/ and https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/185710533467/  
> • Rauchen Ziege: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/612328904522448896/  
> • Monowheel Cycle: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/624682122931765248/  
> • Riding Orb: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/182431869286/  
> • Giant Fraithwarp: https://aiweirdness.com/post/172170729017/  
> • Undead Shark: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/182844693650/  
> • Shark in a Water Elemental: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/174919836052/ (not to be confused with the shark in an ooze https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/182294079893/ )  
> • Artificial Johnson / Mechanical Knackles: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/620391974835503104/ and https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/183647828608/  
> • Ninja made of snakes: https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/178458796876/ with influence by https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/176601513254/ and https://randomencounters.tumblr.com/post/175947335844/  
> • Orb of Devouring: https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/180400974863/ and/or https://randomitemdrop.tumblr.com/post/624810476450267136/, depending on how mad she is


End file.
